Think about your league's payout

Most fantasy baseball leagues that play in a head-to-head format pay out the same way: the majority of the pot goes to the postseason champion and the losing finalist getting half that amount. But is that the fairest way toward paying out?

Given that we're only in the third week of the season, consider whether it's too late to discuss this with your commissioner and fellow owners. As much as many of us play for the thrill of the competition, it is nice to get a proper chunk of change if you do well.

My biggest problem with the traditional payoff is that it discounts too much of the regular season. Everybody plays for 21 weeks, yet your league champion can simply be the best playoff team in September. On the flip side the overemphasis on the playoffs can lead to dominant teams falling victim to a fluke -- which has happened to be twice in fantasy hockey.

It's one thing to try to mirror how the World Series champ is decided, but one can only go so far in making fantasy like reality. And the reality is that there are generally 2-4 owners who have managed well enough to earn a good chunk of change -- and we're not talking about your traditional third-place owner merely making his money back or just earning a little more than that.

I was able to pitch to my commish and fellow owners that a payoff that balanced the two seasons was the best route. So in my daily 10-team non-keeper league, the regular-season wins/loss champion gets 25%, the regular-season points champion gets 25% and the postseason champion gets the remaining 50%.

Given the amount of luck involved in matchups, paying out to the points champion rewards the owner who is snake bitten by close losses and/or bad luck. I like to say that the only thing us owners can control is our lineup and therefore our points scored. Things like the opponent and points against are factors we cannot control.

Since introducing the 25/25/50 payout to my leagues, I haven't heard a vociferous outcry against it. That's because it's the fairest way to monetarily reward the best owners. It should be noted that only once has an owner won all three pots -- now that's a truly dominant team.